[W]ith a flurry of Democratic nominating contests approaching, Bernie Sanders is crisscrossing the country, from South Carolina to Colorado, in hopes of retaining momentum gained from a blowout victory in New Hampshire.
The next two targets are Nevada, which caucuses Saturday, and South Carolina, with primary day Feb. 27.
In Nevada, a limited number of polls point to a close race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and the statistical news site FiveThirtyEight has declared that each candidate has a 50 percent chance of victory.
Sensing opportunity in Nevada, Team Sanders is outspending Clinton on television ads and pouring money into organizers and offices in the state, according to The Washington Post.
The campaign has dispatched Sanders’ two highest-profile Latino surrogates in Nevada, U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, of Arizona, and former Chicago mayoral candidate Jesús “Chuy” Garcia. Also, the Sanders campaign website has been almost entirely translated into Spanish.
While Clinton and Sanders hold similar positions on immigration, opting for a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, the Sanders campaign now routinely criticizes Clinton’s past support for deporting unaccompanied minors.
“Sen. Sanders has put forward a serious immigration plan that focuses on protecting kids and keeping families together,” said Sanders’ national Latino outreach director, Arturo Carmona, last week. “It is time for Secretary Clinton to do the same.”
South Carolina is another story, where Clinton has maintained a wide lead bolstered by her support from African-Americans. FiveThirtyEight gives Clinton a 99 percent chance of winning the Palmetto State, the same margin it gave Sanders in New Hampshire before the primary there.
Sanders has been working hard to reach out to African-Americans in the South, speaking at church services, college rallies and state party dinners. He has also enlisted a number of high-profile black surrogates, including former NAACP President Ben Jealous, actor Danny Glover and political rapper Killer Mike.
The campaign has also been releasing evocative, emotional TV ads, the most recent one highlighting Sanders’ civil rights record.
Some polls have Sanders closing the racial gap in South Carolina, especially with younger voters.
The Vermont senator’s plan to win over black voters goes beyond South Carolina, and this evening he will visit Morehouse College, a historically black school in Atlanta.
In a further boost in the South, Georgia state Sen. Vincent Fort, the second most powerful Democrat in the Georgia Senate, flipped his endorsement from Clinton to Sanders.
“After months of looking at Bernie’s record and studying his positions on health care, Wall Street, predatory lending and the minimum wage, I came to the conclusion that Bernie’s position on the issues that affect my constituents in Georgia the most conform most closely to my positions,” Fort told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
In states where Sanders fares better, he has reverted to the big, boisterous rallies that defined the early stages of his campaign.
He amped up 18,000 people in Colorado on Saturday and 9,400 people in Michigan on Monday.
Sunday he spoke to 1,700 people at a Las Vegas church, highlighting his humanistic approach to politics.
“Some of us believe that what God teaches us and what this world is about is that we do not turn our backs on our brothers and our sisters, that essentially we are in this together,” he said, to cheers.
Monday night he spoke to more than 1,200 people at a United Auto Workers union hall in Detroit to highlight his effort to block trade proposals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to know these trade agreements were phony from Day One,” he said to the crowd, before adding that Clinton once called the deal “the gold standard in trade agreements.”
Besides his big Michigan speeches, Sanders also met privately with families from the city of Flint, where it’s been revealed that residents were provided lead-tainted public drinking water.
Government officials acknowledged mismanagement around containing the crisis, including Gov. Rick Snyder. Sanders has called on Snyder, a Republican, to resign.
In addition to meeting Flint families, the Vermont senator co-wrote a commentary in Saturday’s Detroit Free Press with Erin Brockovich criticizing Flint’s cost-cutting measures that eventually brought poison water into the homes of poor residents.
Sanders has long called for a $1 trillion New Deal-type program to fix America’s infrastructure and has used Flint to illustrate the sorts of problems facing communities across America.
“The deteriorating state of our municipal water systems represents a clear and present danger to the health and welfare of all Americans,” Sanders and Brockovich wrote. “Everyone is vulnerable.”
